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Our View: The silence is loud on Oregon's tax talks Thursday Apr 6, 2017 at 12:01 AM It's time for the Oregon business community to step up and fulfill a promise many made during the Measure 97 campaign last year: Defeat Measure 97 and we'll support a less onerous corporate tax. It's also time for Oregon's political leaders to step up and seek out some common ground rather than putting forward a revenue plan based on an untenable leap in corporate taxes. The clock is ticking and there are a variety of proposals floating through the Legislature — none of them wildly popular by any means. But creating a stalemate in Salem through intransigence — by either side — will lead only to another divisive tax vote and, potentially, deep cuts in critical public services. Oregon is faced with a $1.6 billion shortfall in providing existing services through the next biennium. That number is driven in large part by big increases in the cost of the Public Employees Retirement System. The PERS burden has been passed on to current legislators by deals made in the '70s and '80s and by court rulings that those contracts cannot be materially changed. The real burden falls on schools, cities, counties, their employees and the people who rely on the services provided by those employees. That makes the continued silence out of Salem frustrating and frightening. There is no doubt mad paddling beneath the water that we're unable to see. But we have seen signs of the kinds of partisan intransigence that could make that paddling fruitless. Republicans and some in the business community are demanding that the majority Democrats wring savings from PERS, even though past efforts have met with rejection by the courts. They want a transportation plan, but have once again dug in their heels, demanding a repeal of the low-carbon fuel standard before they would consider a gas tax increase. The governor and many in the Democratic camp have suggested they may support some Measure 97 remake, apparently oblivious to the thumping it took in November. Meanwhile, they continue to pile on new regulations and restrictions that make business leaders not only squirm, but also less receptive to new taxes. Salem, in short, is starting to look a lot like Washington, D.C., with warring camps intent on giving no quarter. It is not one side's fault, it lies with both sides and their failure to meet in the middle. Legislative leaders could take a page from the quarter-century-old solution to a seemingly unsolvable issue. In 1990, then Gov. Neil Goldschmidt brokered changes to Oregon's failing workers' compensation system by putting legislative, business and labor leaders in a room and telling them not to come out till they had a deal. That deal was not perfect, but it put out the raging controversy — and the skyrocketing expense — that was engulfing the workers' comp system. We need that kind of leadership and cooperation again.